Economy and Jobs

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

I find it astounding that there can be that sort of complacency when we have such levels of poverty, homelessness and, yes, people going without food. People have to choose between heating and eating every winter.

More than 80% of the Government’s austerity measures have fallen on women, but some of the hardest-hit people in the Chancellor’s record of pride have been disabled people. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, almost half of those in poverty are disabled or live in a household with a disabled person. The brutality of the work capability assessment has now been associated with 590 suicides.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend share my dismay at the growing rate of child poverty in the UK? Has he seen the prediction by the Institute for Fiscal Studies that by the end of this Parliament, on the current trend, the rate will by well over one third—even higher than the catastrophic level that the Labour Government inherited in 1997?

[John McDonnell]

We are returning to a society of grotesque inequalities and poverty among some of the most vulnerable. How can anyone claim that as a proud record?

Is it a record to be proud of that the Chancellor’s cap on public sector pay has contributed to wages falling by 10% since 2008? We have witnessed the longest fall in wages on record. Nearly 6 million people earn less than the living wage. People were shocked when the Royal College of Nursing revealed that nurses’ pay had fallen by 14%, which has forced some nurses—yes, nurses—to rely on food banks.

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[Mr Hammond]

That takes me slightly away from my line of attack, but I know that the issue is of great importance to Members on both sides of the House, and that my colleagues on the Treasury Bench have been seeking a solution. I understand that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equalities either has made or is about to make an announcement in the form of a letter to Members explaining that she intends to intervene to fund abortions in England for women arriving here from Northern Ireland. I hope that the House will consider that to be a sensible way of dealing with the challenge.

[Stephen Timms]

rose—

[Mr Hammond]

That was a very neat move by the right hon. Gentleman. I cannot resist giving way to him.

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[Stephen Timms]

I am very grateful. This time, I want to raise the subject of amendment (g). I commend the Chancellor for his efforts to explain to Cabinet colleagues that having your cake and eating it is not an option available on the Brexit negotiating table. Very hard choices will have to be made. Does the Chancellor agree that, given the scale of what is at stake in Brexit, the option of remaining in the single market must at least stay on the table?

[Mr Hammond]

I think that there is a genuine misunderstanding in some of the debate. When we leave the European Union, we will leave the single market and the customs union. That is not a matter of choice, but a matter of legal necessity. The question is not whether we would be in the single market or in the customs union; the question is what kind of arrangements we could negotiate as part of a close partnership with the European Union that would allow our businesses to continue to trade with the EU and the EU’s businesses to continue to trade with us, so that the prosperity benefits of close trade with our European Union neighbours could continue. I am committed to trying to find a deal that will allow that to happen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), and I agree with him that Brexit is not paradise. I am also pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), and I congratulate her on a powerful and passionate maiden speech that was appreciated across the House. As she reminded us, we have just had an extraordinary election campaign. Several Members who used to sit on the Government Benches and were looking forward to benefiting from the anticipated Conservative landslide are no longer here, and the voters passed judgment on seven years of Conservative economic policy. Partly, no doubt, that involved the Conservative failure on the deficit, which was supposed to have been eradicated by 2015 although it was nowhere near that. More than that, however, it was about the impact of Conservative policies on the lives of ordinary people, and in my short contribution I want to highlight two areas: first, the troubling increase in child poverty that we are seeing, and secondly, the explosion in food bank use.

In 2009, with all-party support, George Cameron—[Laughter.] George Osborne—I think some of us still remember him—and David Cameron supported legislation that I took through the House which obliged the Government to work towards eradicating child poverty by 2020. Once the 2010 election was out of the way, that commitment was discarded, and subsequently the Government simply repealed the legislation and took it off the statute book. Child poverty was falling until 2010, and relative child poverty after housing costs came to about 27%. After 2010 it plateaued, and then it started to go up. It is now more than 30%, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies projects that by the end of this Parliament it will be more than 35%, and rising steeply. If that projection is correct, the level of child poverty will be higher even than the disastrous level that the Labour Government inherited in 1997, and I wish to underline for the House just how troubling an outcome that would be.

Secondly, among the most visible consequences of the policies of the past seven years has been the extraordinary growth in the use of food banks. People received emergency food parcels from Trussell Trust food banks on 40,898 occasions in 2009-10. Last year, it had gone up to 1.18 million—an almost thirtyfold increase in seven years. Every single one of the 400-plus Trussell Trust food banks is based in a church. They have done an extraordinary job and I praise them unreservedly, but the Government should not be off-loading their responsibilities in this way. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) hosted an event this morning at which the Trussell Trust published research by Oxford University and King’s College London, which shows that

“households using food banks are…three times more likely to contain someone with a disability than other low income households”

and that

“The people using food banks are groups who have been most affected by recent welfare reforms: people with disabilities, lone parents and large family households.”

It reminds us that entitlements for those groups were cut again in April—after the research was carried out. In the case of new claimants of employment and support allowance in the work-related activity group, they have lost another £30 a week. We were promised “full compensation” for that cut. In fact, there has been no compensation at all.

Economic policies since 2010 have made life very hard for many people—that is what the election result tells us—but Brexit threatens to make matters a good deal worse. That is why I welcome the distinctive tenor of the Chancellor’s contributions to the discussions, and his telling observation about having one’s cake and eating it, which I think we can see as a retort to the Foreign Secretary’s comments. I must say that the position the Chancellor is setting out is certainly in marked contrast to that of the Brexit Secretary and the Prime Minister. I urge him to continue to point out the economic consequences of the hard Brexit his Cabinet colleagues favour. It is also why I am supporting amendment (g)—I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Chuka Umunna) for tabling it—to highlight the crucial importance for jobs and prosperity in Britain of not ruling out membership of the customs union and the single market. We will not get barrier-free access to the single market if we are not members of the single market, despite the promises Ministers are making. It is vital for jobs, growth and prosperity in the UK.